The Business of Fake Hollywood Money - <AUTHOR> http://priceonomics.com/the-business-of-fake-hollywood-money/ <comment><USER2> _"Police stuff, for instance, is something you've got to be careful with," says Bilson. "If it's too real, you'll have issues." For this reason, prop houses make themselves accessible only to "bona fide motion picture entities," which must have $1 million insurance policies on file to merely rent out something as simple as a ten-dollar police badge._

Alarmingly true. I was cast as a prison guard once for a film which was being shot in a recently decommissioned jail. I used to smoke then, and every time I went outside someone would come up and ask me about visiting hours or some other prison-related question. I thought the outfit was obviously fake but most people don't look at the writing on the shoulder patches or the exact kind of badge someone is wearing as long as you're in a uniform and have the relevant props.

It doesn't surprise me at all that people would attempt to spend fake money. I've seen people try to spend bills that were obviously made on an inkjet printer.

<comment><USER3> _I 've seen people try to spend bills that were obviously made on an inkjet printer._

Sadly, I've seen people that worked for the family owned bar accept bills that were obviously made on an inkjet printer. High rag content paper feels like real money and in dim light with an element of urgency (lots of people waiting for a drink) it's sometimes easy to miss.

<comment><USER4> Then there are those "magic pens" which are supposed to detect fake bills but actually just detect low quality (high starch) paper. James Randi, in his wild, younger days, would spray real bills with spray starch to cause a little chaos at the bank.

<comment><USER5> > James Randi, in his wild, younger days, would spray real bills with spray > starch to cause a little chaos at the bank.

Terrifyingly devious while causing no physical harm. I wonder if pranksters these days are just as imaginative. Or perhaps the environment is less conducive toward appropriate penalties.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can't wait to see fake hollywood bitcoins in the movies. I'm sure they'll just 'cat /dev/urandom' for awhile and call it good.

My assumption based on the title was the article would be a discussion about hollywood accounting where numbers are manipulated until only the studio wins. I was pleasantly surprised to read about fake currency.

<comment><USER7> > Can't wait to see fake hollywood bitcoins in the movies. I'm sure they'll > just 'cat /dev/urandom' for awhile and call it good.

You overestimate Hollywood tremendously. They'll create a GUI interface using Visual Basic and see if they can track an IP address. [1]

[1] - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkDD03yeLnU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkDD03yeLnU)

<comment><USER8> Hollywood has gotten better about faking technology. At least some people in Hollywood have. "Silicon Valley" on HBO went as far as having a Stanford CS professor develop a viable compression-rating system to be used on the show (the "Weissman Score," named for Professor Tsachy Weissman).

<comment><USER9> I've been really impressed by the TV show Halt And Catch Fire in this regard, the sales guy is slightly incorrect as a sales guy would be, but the engineers are bang-on.

<comment><USER10> Halt and Catch Fire is doing a bang up job of reflecting the technology and even the market of the time. Really refreshing to see.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There seem to be a lot of possibilities that would do in various positions.

If you could make the money feel distinctively different, while appearing the same, it would probably be enough to cause a receiver to pay sufficient attention to notice the minor differences.

Printing different denominations on each side of the bill would be sufficient for most stationary money.

For scenes with large amounts of free flowing money, you could print the notes backwards and flip the film.

I don't think there would be any single solution for all instances, but I think you could pick a form that would suit whichever scene you were currently shooting.

<comment><USER12> I wonder if they could just print FAKE under the band that's bound around the stack?

<comment><USER4> I think we're losing something here.

We're all inherently working within the movie/prop company's framework while brainstorming fake money ideas. The prop company has two goals:

      1.  Make something convincing on camera.
      2.  Make something readily distinguishable from real money.

They've already succeeded! New solutions may be fun, but it's still reinventing the wheel in the end. (Which may explain why programmers are falling over themselves to do it...) But there are two extra constraints that Hollywood isn't meeting with some of their current solutions:

      3.  Make something which meets Federal laws for fake money.
      4.  Make something which could not be passed ever.

3&4 are potentially the same, in that 3 is written to try to achieve 4, but I think it's important to note that Hollywood is (or was, until the recent innovations mentioned at the end of the article) failing at.

I don't think most of the solutions suggested in this thread actually solve 4. I think mirrored, cut in half, and even bills with 'FAKE' printed across the middle could still be passed with a fair success rate, and moreover a criminal could laugh it off as a mistake if they were caught.

So what couldn't be passed, aside from the absurdly large/small bills the Feds want, or the glued together blocks used now?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "a movie set in the 1920s, to provide bills from that era. Elyea adds that it's "hard for production companies to liquidate assets after the film or television series," so they choose to rent cash out instead of purchasing it at face value."

This phrase is glorious. Rent cash.

<comment><USER14> I agree, although if you think about it, that's exactly what you're doing when you take out a loan from the bank.

<comment><USER13> Or buying money with future money. Or the promise of future money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So Hollywood can generate realistic looking footage of 50 foot high humanoid robots fighting each other in downtown Hong Kong, but it can't digitally correct some orange dollar bills to make them appear green?

<comment><USER2> The movies with giant robots tend to have vastly higher budgets than the ones involving suitcases of money, although these days 'invisible' FX are the norm even on lower budget projects.

But I think it's more to do with departmental splits. ie if you're the prop guy and you turn up with a pile of orange money saying 'just CG it' then you're offloading part of your job onto a different department and messing up their budget, which is a big no-no. Producers always prefer the person who makes things simpler over the person who makes them more complicated.

Bear in mind that the majority of people work together on a per-project basis so organizationally film production is more fragmented than you might expect. Even on big productions you typically don't know many of the people you are working with at the start of a project and you only meet each other a few days or weeks before shooting starts. Like any other organization, different departments guard their budget allocations jealously.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I thought this would be on Hollywood accounting. Its interesting to see the fake bills used in films however.

</comment><comment><USER17> My sister used to work for a Prop studio, and one Christmas she gave various members of the family fake $100 bills. They said very clearly "For Motion Picture use Only" on them, and it was quite obviously not a real $100 bill. My brother jokingly decided to give it to a cashier who then proceeded to start counting change. Embarrassed, he had to explain to them that it was all a joke, and the money was fake.

<comment><USER18> The bar for being a cashier isn't all that high. I bought a gift card at an IKEA in Shanghai for 100元 (about $16). IKEA's web site seemed to indicate that their gift cards couldn't be used across countries, but I took it to a cashier at a store in California to see if that was true. The cashier happily informed me that my card was loaded with 100 dollars. When I expressed surprise, she gave me a receipt that correctly showed 100 CNY.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Easy solution. All non-closeup bills are literally cut in half at production. Wrapped in bill wraps, you'd never know the difference.

<comment><USER20> A cut bill is perfectly valid at least in Europe and I suspect in the US is the same as there are movies in which the Big gangster cuts a money bill and tells someone else if he wants the other part do something.

<comment><USER21> Yes. If you have both halves of the bill a bank will exchange it for another one. Even if you're missing a part of it. US bills have two serial numbers; generally you need one whole serial number and part of the second. (Obviously so you can't cut it in half and try to exchange each half separately.)

(I was a part-time bank teller while in college.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> One solution nobody has mentioned is filming in another country. While there probably are laws restricting the "foreign" currency reproductions, I'd think it's unlikely the authorities in, say, Canada would spend nearly as much effort going after prop US currency as the Secret Service would in The States.

<comment><USER23> Canada might. They're pretty tight with the US, and fake US currency is still a diplomatic problem for them. Film in Iran, however, and they probably wouldn't care at all.

<comment><USER24> Yeah, agreed. Plenty of places will accept US currency at par with Canadian, and many cashiers have no idea how to check if the money is genuine, if they check at all.

A flood of fake US $20s in Vancouver could really screw people over.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Have bright (green/blue/orange) bills and simply CGI it to look like real money. Would even work for overseas markets, to make them euros for example.

</comment><comment><USER26> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_Accounting](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_Accounting)

</comment><comment><USER27> I was hoping this would be an article on how movies always lose money even with record box office.

<comment><USER28> Why would you hope to see it reposted here? Especially since it sounds like you've already read it.

<comment><USER27> I have never seen it clearly explained.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I heard the same story from Adam Savage, but it was Con-Air, not Rush Hour 2.

<comment><USER30> When Adam Savage shows the contents of his replica of the Jason Bourne's "go bag"

from the Bourne Identity's Swiss bank scene he briefly touches the subject of bank

notes not being too close to the real stuff

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQbbtnTz1KE&t=346](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQbbtnTz1KE&t=346)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Maybe they could use disappearing ink? Or ink that substantially changed color in a few hours?

<comment><USER2> Odds are that it will be blank by the time you're ready to shoot it :-) Film production can be sloooow, it's easy to spend hours adjusting the lighting for every scene and then you have multiples camera setups within each scene and multiple takes for every setup....

<comment><USER31> I was imagining something that would oxidize quickly. If you could make it cheaply and vacuum/nitrogen pack it, you could have as much as you wanted on hand. But, yeah, could easily be an added source of stress.

"That was perfect!" "What about the money? It looks faded. Is that faded?"

<comment><USER2> Exactly! There is nothing worse than having everything go right only to discover that one thing...wasn't.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple Expects To Ship 10 Million Tablets in First Year - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a6GpNsdiz204 <comment><USER2> Snow Leopard ("0 new features") makes more sense in light of this. They let the engineers concentrate on decreasing the footprint and improving performance, while the UI/design team was pulled off to work on the tablet.

<comment><USER3> There were some minor UI improvements, like stacks and expose.

<comment><USER4> Those came in Leopard, actually.

<comment><USER5> Expose is a lot older than even Leopard, but what he means is that they were changed in 10.6; therefore there were some (if small) UI changes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As always, the Macalope says it best.

"January tablet unveiling 'confirmed' by ex-Google employee". Oh, well, then, that's all we need to WHAAAAAAAAAAAAT THE F-?

<http://twitter.com/TheMacalope/status/7238525063>

<comment><USER7> But hey, the speculation is bolstered by a quote from Rob Enderle! And he knows what he's talking about: <http://daringfireball.net/linked/2009/12/09/enderle-joojoo>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If I recall correctly this was the goal Steve Jobs set for the first year of iPhone sales also. I'm not sure Apple will have as much success with the tablet right away unless they get very aggressive with pricing. The iPhone was a type of product people have always wanted. It was an easy sell being so ahead of its competition at the time. Apple has to cultivate a market for the tablet and convince people they want it.

<comment><USER9> Steve Jobs probably has at least one particular annoyance in mind that this tablet solves for people. But it may be an annoyance such that we're not even aware of it so much as a problem. It may be a "fact of life" to us.

With the iPhone, I was aware that there were many times I was annoyed that the data on my phone didn't match the data on my computer. I was also tired of carrying around an iPod _and_ a phone _and_ a PDA.

If the tablet has enough computing resources, then it could solve the data sync problem. I can simply have the "master copy" of all of my data with me, all the time. You can do this with a USB stick, but you can't do anything with the data in transit unless you stick it in a netbook. With tools like Bonjour, Apple should be able to make all of your devices and MobileMe seamlessly sync with a master copy of your data. You always have it at hand. If you have an idea, and want to make a quick note or a sketch, then you do it, and _it's a part of your main data_ and not in some note-taking thing off to the side.

<comment><USER8> That would be a good enhancement to both a tablet and the iPhone. I've begun to use my iDisk in this fashion after the release of the iDisk app for the iPhone but that's basically limited to viewing (selected) file types. If all third party apps could read/write to iDisk it would be far more useful to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder if the FTC is scratching their heads wondering what to do about Apple product rumors.

</comment><comment><USER11> All the device needs for phone functionality is a blue tooth radio and a cellular radio, which is nearly free in terms of component cost, especially since a cellular radio would be required anyway for ebook and eperiodical functionality.

<comment><USER12> But what about iChat video capabilities? That seems like a pretty fun application.

An electronic picture frame that can receive videophone calls from the grandkids? Classic 21st-century technology concept.

<comment><USER12> Oops, this was already covered here in this thread:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1024982>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As of 2008, Apple sells 2.5 million Macs a quarter[1], which gives 10 million Macs per year. There's no way to sell 10 million units of a device that doesn't do anything your existing devices can't do. If the "tablet" is actually just a touch screen MacBook, then this makes sense.

[1] [http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9135747/Apple_laptop_...](http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9135747/Apple_laptop_sales_surged_25_in_June_says_NPD) (Extrapolating from one quarter isn't very accurate, but I'm lazy.)

<comment><USER14> _Apple sold 3.05 million Macintosh® computers during the quarter, representing a 17 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 10.2 million iPods during the quarter, representing an eight percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 7.4 million iPhones in the quarter, representing seven percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter._ \-- <http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2009/10/19results.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I love tablets!!

I believe they are the future of computers, and Apple will design the thing the right way, changing the interface if necessary.

A computer doesn't need to be attached to a typewriter machine.

It's good news for everybody. The acers and eees will copy the design and will make it affordable.

<comment><USER16> Why would tablets be the future of computers? At home I have a 22" widescreen standing on my desk, in what way would my computing experience become better by me carrying that around?

Why would Apple successfully design the thing the right way? They have a good track record, but past performance is not a guarantee of future performance...

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Sounds to me like he's expecting them to have recreated BumpTop (the 3D multitouch UI for Windows) on OS X. It'll be hailed as innovative and revoutionary I'm sure.

</comment><comment><USER18> Maybe it has a charging dock with a vga/dvi/hdmi & audio out to connect to LCD TVs? I'd might buy that!

</comment><comment><USER19> To sell 10 million in a year, wouldn't these need to be under 100 bucks?

<comment><USER14> Apple sold in excess of 10 million iPods last _quarter_ , most of which were priced above $100. That's in addition to 7 million iPhones.

My own pet theory is that a new device will carry the iPod brand (e.g. "iPod Slate") and take the top price point ($399) from the Touch. They might not sell 2.5 million in the first quarter at that, but I can easily see sales ramping up to meet 10 million if the device is even remotely interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> "former Google Inc. executive Lee Kai-fu"

You would think Bloomberg would at least get his name right.. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kai-Fu_Lee>

<comment><USER21> Family names come first in Chinese, Japanese and a number of other languages. E.g., Chairman Mao was Mao Zedong, not Zedong Mao.

<comment><USER22> The frustrating thing is that many Asians are starting to reverse their names when working with the rest of the world. If "Kai-Fu Lee" sends me an email, I'll have no idea how to address him ("Hi, Lee", "Hi, Kai-Fu", "Hi, Mr. Lee," and so forth). :-P

<comment><USER23> If it helps, chinese often address other chinese using their given name rather than the family name, otherwise it would be pretty annoying to address each other within the family. If it's a formal greeting, use the family name, otherwise use the given name.

<comment><USER24> Unless I misunderstand you, isn't that basically the same thing we do in English?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Quickly find quality remote developers from Eastern Europe - <AUTHOR> I am a founder of Grenadehub.com, a platform that helps you find remote developers from Poland and Ukraine. Those are one of the best European engineers with great English.
My platform started a few months ago and we are helping companies find devs in a few days. If you are looking for a developer, please check our service and we will help you find a developer!
I am also looking for a feedback since our service is a new venture. What do you think?
If you have any questions, let me know!
email: firstname.lastname@example.com <comment><USER2> How big is your database of developers/agencies today? How many successful hire leads have you generated?

The idea is great and I myself have seen too many people in DACH regions overpaying for local developers because they don't have trust to "unreliable remote eastern European freelancers".

It would be awesome if you provide some case studies on how you helped some big names (apart from saying that Google trusts your guys).

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, thank you for the questions and nice words!

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From our conversations with them, it appears that on the "bench" (programmers without a project) is from 5, up to 20% of programmers. Which gives us the 1 to 7 thousand programmers who can be available to our clients at any given moment.

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</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Here's a clickable link: [https://www.grenadehub.com/](https://www.grenadehub.com/)

The site design looks great, friendly. Hello from Czechia. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the clickable link and nice words! Greetings from Poland! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Small typo: > _if your company is growing quickly and you need to meet it's pace_

its pace _

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! We will correct it.</comment></comment>


The 727 that Vanished (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/the-727-that-vanished-2371187/ <comment><USER2> For anyone else struggling to read this article on mobile, here's the Wikipedia page - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N844AA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N844AA)

</comment><comment><USER3> > _It is the largest aircraft ever to have disappeared without a trace._

The article is dated September 2010. Flight MH370, a Boeing 777-200ER, that went missing in March 2014 is quite a bit larger in every dimension than N844AA, a Boeing 727-223.

Length and wingspan:

N844AA: 153x108ft or 47x33m [1]

MH370: 209x212ft or 64x65m [2]

[1] [http://www.museumofflight.org/aircraft/boeing-727-223](http://www.museumofflight.org/aircraft/boeing-727-223) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_777#Specifications](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_777#Specifications)

<comment><USER4> Parts of MH370 have since been found.

[http://www.newsweek.com/pieces-mh370-found-reunion- island-36...](http://www.newsweek.com/pieces-mh370-found-reunion- island-360084)

<comment><USER3> MH370 did hold the record for "the largest aircraft ever to have disappeared without a trace" for over a year.

But since a _trace_ of MH370 has indeed been found, I guess we should say that the title for "the largest aircraft ever to have disappeared without a trace" has reverted back to N844AA.</comment></comment></comment>


Watch the moment a self-driving Google car sideswipes a bus - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/9/11186072/google-self-driving-car-bus-crash-video <comment><USER2> There's no way I would have pulled out in front of a bus (or even a car or cyclist) like this; there was barely a gap between the bus and the car in front of the bus, into which the Google car poked its nose. It's probably just an edge case, but I agree with the other post that the parked car has no rights, and no expectation anyone in lane will yield.

</comment><comment><USER3> > the car "predicted that [the bus] would yield to us because we were ahead of > it."

> the bus was only going 15 miles per hour, while the SUV was moving at just 2 > mph.

Watching the video, it looks like Google's plan was to jump out in front of the bus and cut it off. Even had it not resulted in a crash... are they teaching Google to be a bad driver?

<comment><USER4> >Watching the video, it looks like Google's plan was to jump out in front of the bus and cut it off

It doesn't look like it even did that. It's just barely moving, and it's debatable whether the bus driver even saw it actually moving. If I was the driver behind, I would assume the the SUV was just signalling to move out, but was going to wait for me to pass. If I was passing in a car then obviously I would take evasive action, but the bus driver likely never even noticed.

It looks like google's car logic is slightly flawed. The car should either make a decisive move, or stay put. Creeping into a lane of faster moving traffic at 2mph is a somewhat ridiculous plan of action.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm super pro-autonomous vehicles. I believe they will save far more lives than harm. But WTF, its like the rules engine had an incorrect entry. When you're leaving the curb lane (parked) you basically have no rights. Just wait for it to be clear. Maybe Google is starting to teach it more than the rules, but also the "rules of thumb" like if you gun it in front of a car, they'll brake a little.

<comment><USER6> Okay, you can be super pro autonomous but the problem is not technical.

Who is liable in case of accident (financially and legally)?

The car (no legal existence), the algorithm (no legal existence) a developer doing a library that fails and has been used without is knowledge (nop), the developer integrating without control (nop), the scrum master who pushed a bad choice? the financial director for not caring about the cost of risks? The CTO .... no one is liable. Liability is diluted.

Who will pay when people will die?

And given VW dieselgate, RSA weakening of crypto, the actual world does not seems to support software engineers caring about their users or regulations.

<comment><USER5> I see no reason why liability doesnt follow just like (afaik) all tech does.

When I use my computer, if it malfunctions and hurts someone, its the manufacturers fault (think DELL w/ bad batteries), if an engineer was deeply negligent they may take on liability, but generally the company. If I use my computer for bad I am liable. So on and so forth to wherever the source of the fault is.

<comment><USER6> People like my mother are losing an astounding amount of work because of poorly designed interfaces.

My mother that still has an economical activity is losing money with modern technologies. And no one is liable.

It is is the "user's fault". The keyboard chair bug.

If also so many people get fucked by the oldest trick on earth of executing arbitrary software by trusting an unknown source it is clearly an information problem.

Either the industry is unable to make the information clear, or the information presented is not adapted to human beings.

In both cases, given the number of victims and money lost do you really think that this industry considers itself liable? Users are treated guilty by default in the mind of the companies.

The PR of IT is that all the bugs from software is the fault of the users. It is denial.

We (software industry) are the root cause some people lose money and no one can sue us for this.

Because we impress them with our confidence. And they believe us.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Think You're Multitasking? Think Again - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95256794 <comment><USER2> I think most coders know this by now, particularly since multitasking on a single-core system merely involves some really fast context-switches.

However, there is something that humans can do very well that is similar to multitasking, but it isn't really multitasking. Ask any high performance athelete or martial artist who has hit "the zone". Japanese Zen archers, for example, specifically train for this ability to see everything (using the peripheral vision), see significant details (for example, the weak spot on the target's armor), but done in a way without attaching the focus to the details. The result is the ability to take out the target without becoming so narrow- focused that you lose perception of things going on around you. However, unlike multitasking, you're aimed at just one goal instead of hopping from one goal to the next. You can get a glimpse of this skill if you try to pick out a specific detail out of the corner of your eye (using your peripheral vision).

Finally, the most important part of this skill is being able to focus without attatchment. The sensation is very weird since we're mostly socialized to avoid this state of mind. It is really useful when you need any sort of high performance.

Your target doesn't have to be an physical object. The target can be getting that beta product launch out the door.

If you want to read more about this, check out the book "Art of Learning". There is an entire chapter devoted to developing this skill so that it can be triggered at will.

</comment><comment><USER3> Who actually thinks this?

"Think your hair is made of spaghetti? Think again!"</comment>


The Counterintuitive Tech Behind Netflix's Worldwide Launch - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2016/01/the-counterintuitive-tech-behind-netflixs-worldwide-launch/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is really an interesting read. It covers the 3 major issues (at least in India) directly or indirectly - less usage of credit card, the internet infrastructure issues and the fair usage policy. All three of them are really hard problems as they cost a lot of money to scale. YouTube started facing similar issues in regards to infrastructure and fair usage policy long time ago. The credit card issue cannot be solved soon but if Netflix starts accepting Debit cards or partners with PayTm and other payment systems, it will be better. The internet infrastructure is lacking both in terms of speed as well as outreach. This problem will definitely take a lot of time to be fixed. Facebook, Flipkart and others are trying new ways to reach more people with Free Basics, Airtel Zero, etc. The tricky one is fair usage policy. If the service providers are to be Net Neutral, then increasing the data cap for fair usage policy or removing it altogether would be hard for them.</comment>


Ask HN: Best resources for running a successful Kickstarter campaign? - <AUTHOR> What are some good ebooks / actual books / websites out there for running a successful online fundraising campaign? <comment><USER2> Why don't you observe the successful campaigns yourself and copy what they do?</comment>


Your API Consumers Aren't Who You Think They Are - <AUTHOR> http://bryanhelmig.com/your-api-consumers-arent-who-you-think-they-are

<comment><USER2> When you design your APIs, you put a paradigm into depending who will be your user. I know for example a Hotel booking API which for the same resources expose 3 differents API depending on their final users.

They have one design for airplane tickets services (which requires sector- specific naming standards), one other for other Hotel booking sites and a last one for long tail developers. It is the same ressources but 3 differents APIs for exposing it, because they know their user needs.

I just think that when you design your API before knowing your user/customers, your users will be as you said in the article "not who you think they are"

A famous chinese proverb: "if you don't know where you are going, you will always arrive in a wrong place"

Edit : that resumes the issue I'm talking [http://apijoy.tumblr.com/post/51977839347/when-you-didnt- exp...](http://apijoy.tumblr.com/post/51977839347/when-you-didnt-expect-a-use- of-your-api)

<comment><USER3> I think we also shouldn't underestimate the power of feedback, to help you tweak the API along the way. It's almost impossible to get it right the first time.

Check out the feedback that makes this particular API much better than when it was just launched [https://www.mashape.com/shepik/web- screenshot#!issues?page=1...](https://www.mashape.com/shepik/web- screenshot#!issues?page=1&tab=closed)

Disclaimer: I work for Mashape (an API Marketplace)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I infact constantly find the opposite.

APIs documentation and forums help the lay-coder, but don't help me at all with trying to pin down a wire-format, or clear up an ambiguity in the docs.

<comment><USER5> This is one of the reasons we built Runscope (yes, shameless plug). Seems like no amount of documentational diligence will completely prevent wire gremlins. Whether its faulty SDKs, typos, etc. if you can't see what's on the wire and share that with the party on the other end you'll waste hours debugging unfixable problems.

<comment><USER6> Your frontpage seems to have an &emdash; encoded incorrectly.

<comment><USER5> Thanks, it's fixed now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Excellent post.

I created JustMigrate so I had to work with APIs of Tumblr and Posterous. Having had experience in building APIs and working with APIs of almost all the premium/famous/infamous services around, I was shocked when I came across Posterous API documentation.

Shocked in a beautiful way, as I couldn't believe how easy it was to understand. The API had realtime implementations right there, where you can enter values and check the response that you are getting.

Most API developers except users to use some scripting language or Poster to deal with the APIs to understand the response. Sometimes they give away code snippets, some of the times they will list down all the libraries that people built on top of the API, thus ensuring that the documentation bulk was the responsibility of the library developers. I was glad to see Posterous didnt' stick to that norm.

</comment><comment><USER8> UX design has the concept of personas.

They act like unit tests, an insurance policy against scope creep in the UX that serves no-one (or at least, not your customers) and in essence break the API goals.

The key to personas is to create an idea of the end user, one persona per category of users. You may have power users, lay users, and non-developers.

These personas should be quite concrete... give them a name, a face, and age, a story.

Then, when you are building the UX hold up the proposal and ask "Did we do good by Tom, Sally and Robert?". If the answer is no to any, you _may_ have a problem, and if it's no to all you definitely have a problem.

Personas help ensure the UX keeps solving user problems. Making their life easier.

I would think that as APIs are to help solves problems and make life easier, that personas could be used here too... to create a strong idea of the people that do use an API.

So long as the personas are honest... and really reflect who your users will be, or are... then it should help you create the right documentation and API for them.

</comment><comment><USER9> We've seen this a lot in user testing at Twilio, and I tried to boil down a lot of the info we saw into this talk, along the same lines as the post.

[http://www.confreaks.com/videos/2468-railsconf2013-how-to- wr...](http://www.confreaks.com/videos/2468-railsconf2013-how-to-write- documentation-for-people-that-don-t-read)

<comment><USER7> I forgot about Twilio's API. That's another good implementation. Even Foursquare has an excellent API documentation. Instagram on the other hand...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This seems like a reasonable place to remind people of the importance of multilingual APIs/API documentation, too.

<comment><USER2> Still depending of your users. Ir your users prefers an other language than english, do it. It can be a competititve advantage. But be sure to know your users to do that, because english is ruling the API documentation world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I feel like this is the reason why ITTT is so popular.</comment>


Going Serverless with OpenFaaS and Golang – The Ultimate Setup and Workflow - <AUTHOR> https://towardsdatascience.com/going-serverless-with-openfaas-and-golang-the-ultimate-setup-and-workflow-52a4a85a7951 <comment><USER2> I'd like to see also some more posts like this with C++ and Rust and compare them, also in terms of efficiency (performance, Watts/throughput)

<comment><AUTHOR> Would you be able to contribute that or connect us with a Rust developer?

<comment><USER2> perhaps the author of this post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21595948](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21595948)</comment></comment></comment>


What it's like to be a male in tech, and then a female - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/1a9d60a9e520

<comment><USER2> This offers some real perspective, but it's still hard to tell how much confidence, or the lack of, factored into everything. If you don't appear to be confident about something it can be a turn off. I'm mention that not to deny sexism but to say that you should always exude confidence.

</comment><comment><USER3> The plural of anecdote is not data. Richard Lippa has done studies that show the more economic freedom and gender equality a country has, the more men and women choose traditional occupations along gender lines.

It's pretty obvious: in countries where your high paying options are limited (e.g. eastern Europe or India), you are more likely to go after a career in STEM, preferring economic success over personal actualization.

Decades of pro equality policy in e.g. Norway or Sweden have not significantly increased the number of women studying STEM. Government officials say outreach programs result in a temporary increase in women that drops again after a year or two.

But if you bring facts or studies with n=200000 respondents to the discussion, someone like this will dismiss it because she worked with some shitty men before and generalizes her experience to every woman and man in the industry.

If you see a sexism post on medium, you can be sure it's going to be anecdotal and utterly US-centric.</comment>


If Google's Really Proud Of Google+, It Should Share Some Real User Figures - <AUTHOR> http://marketingland.com/if-googles-really-proud-of-google-it-should-share-some-real-user-figures-9796 <comment><USER2> So Google's argument is that because G+ is pervasively integrated, you can use it without being on plus.google.com. While this is technically correct[1]... they're still being evasive. Not everyone using G+-enabled Google products is using the G+ bonus features.

Rather than dancing around the single "user" number, Google could give more direct usage stats by breaking it down by feature. 20MM on plus.google.com, another 30MM sharing content onto G+, another 10MM clicking on G+ results in the normal Google SERPs, and so forth. It's still not a complete picture, but it's a hell of a lot better than "enabled G+ once, and is currently active on YouTube" that they're reporting now.

I am inclined to agree with the conspiracy theory that if these secondary stats were any good, we would be hearing about them.

[1] The best kind of correct!

<comment><USER3> "I am inclined to agree with the conspiracy theory that if these secondary stats were any good, we would be hearing about them."

I don't think it's that simple. Google publishes very few figures that have to do with its core profitability. For example, number of searches a day is not reported. I doubt it's because that figure isn't any good.

<comment><USER2> But in this case, Google _is_ publishing numbers. Numbers that by their own admission aren't even trying to measure the right thing, and which seem to over-count that wrong thing anyways. Given that they're publishing any numbers at all, why are they publishing those numbers in place of more relevant ones?

<comment><USER4> After early-adopters, regular people will join only if their friends are already there.

Any user metric going upwards says "look, it's not a ghost town anymore" and drives future adoption.

<comment><USER5> Well, that's assuming people actually believe what Google. And even they believe what Google says, they don't have any compelling reason to switch from Facebook until their friends actually do switch.

What I mean is that even assuming that people believe google's statement of "it's not a ghost town anymore", they are probably not going to move until it actually stops being a ghost town.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> First, Google has made moves to indicate that Google+ is not a finished product, or even a 1.0 release. Their recent overhaul shows that. Their lack of public APIs shows that.

Secondly, Google has made it pretty clear that Google+ does not stand on its own. The "plus" is in the name after "Google". It's Google, plus. Google+ is just a frontend, an entry point. It's the Yahoo landing site for all of Google's services. Youtube, Google Search, Picasa, they are the "plus" in Google+.

Google+ is not and never will be (and never wanted to be) a Facebook. Google wants it to be a grouping of their services in a way that's easy to consume and share. I'll admit I didn't read the entire article, I skimmed it because there are about a billion points being made in the fashion of a one-man argument.

The entire article could have been just this one sentence:

 _And yes, Google+ is indeed a layer that goes throughout Google properties._

It is illogical for the author to be irritated by reality. Taking Google+ by itself and comparing it to Facebook is equally illogical.

<comment><USER7> "Google has made moves to indicate that Google+ is not a finished product, or even a 1.0 release."

Honestly I hope Google destroys FB but let's stop apologizing for their half finished releases. G+ was released 9 months ago. For 6 months they've defaulted new g-mail users to sign up for it. This is not a beta, full stop.

If it's unfinished, if there are no APIs, if they broke a lot of the custom apps that were made for their struggling social service with their month 9 redesign, those aren't things you make excuses for. Those are things you list as negatives.

<comment><USER6> For any other company, sure. Google has a habit of pushing incomplete products out.

When Minecraft was first released to play, was that broken? Was Notch making excuses when he said "I'm still working on it"? Was it not continuously updated. And he charged _money_ for that. Let's not forget how long GMail was in "beta". Google does betas. They push unfinished products out, for free, and update them continuously until they are finished. That's not a negative, that's Google being Google. Anyone who's been on the Internet for more than a year knows this is how they operate, and that most of the time it ends up being pretty cool.

<comment><USER8> I think the parent's point is that if that's how you're going to roll, it can count as a negative. There's a difference between breaking functionality, and not providing new features until it's ready.

Google Plus is not marketed as a beta product. With all the computer science- type smart folks at Google, I don't understand why big breakage is OK.

> They push unfinished products out, for free, and update them continuously > until they are finished.

Well, it's not 'free', since the users are the product. And yes, some things get finished, other unfinished things like Wave just get cut at some point.

<comment><USER6> _I don't understand why big breakage is OK._

Did they break their published APIs? They've only ever published a handful of frankly useless API calls. If it was someone just scraping unpublished routines, that's hardly Google's fault.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Me, yesterday:

"Seems to me that continuing to count everyone who gets an Android phone or signs up for Gmail as a G+ user just invites people to pile on and point out how underwhelming G+'s userbase has been to date."

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3829846>

You can defend G+ being a beta release or fundamentally different from facebook and twitter despite aping tons of FB and Twitter features. What you can't really defend imho is the continued exaggeration of G+'s userbase. I'd guess over half of the claimed G+ userbase has never touched it. Many have probably never heard of it.

</comment><comment><USER9> If you are running a social network, then you publish how many people are actively doing stuff inside of it. Clearly, they are not doing this.

If you are running an identity service which provides more information for the targeting of advertisements, then you publish how many "enhanced" profiles you now have. What you are trying to do is reach the people who would like to do that kind of advertising. Every time that number grows, it's even more inviting to them.

G+ can succeed on their own terms even if nobody ever posts a single thing to it. If you've populated your profile with information, they have already succeeded.

<comment><USER10> This argument doesn't make sense. Google did profile pages long before Google+. And advertisers don't need your real name and baby pictures to target advertisements at you. (I personally see no value in this for any advertisers, but I'm speaking for myself and not Google.)

<comment><USER11> > And advertisers don't need your real name and baby pictures

What a wonderful observation.

If you accept the characterization that Google's "free" software product users (us) are called Google's (eye balls) product for its clients (advertisers), the intriguing question is just which (new?) "client" of Google is interested in us as identified individuals.

<comment><USER10> Which client is interested in open source projects or self-driving cars?

<comment><USER11> Come on! Larry Page didn't sent a memo out tying your bonus to self driving cars.

<comment><USER10> Pretty much every company ties bonuses to the success of the company. Google is no different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Google+ sent me some insight the other day. The 3 posts on Google+ that should interest me the most.

The topic of all three? That's right, you guessed it. Google+ itself.

yawn.

</comment><comment><USER13> Subscription counts in G+ are only a problem (to me) if:

A) They are too low for a user to engage anyone, which is simply untrue (I have lots of fun and engaging conversations - with strangers, often - on G+)

B) The product relies on a massive user base.

You'll have to ask Google about point B as far as profitability goes, but for me, point B does not apply because I don't care if my Aunt is on G+.

To me, G+ is a much nicer Twitter, and a way to organize and meta-tag my contacts. Nothing more. I use it every day and I am happy with it like that.

I would be very sad if G+ ever became like Facebook (which, in my very cynical opinion, is basically a 'happy birthday' rotary club & dating service).

<comment><USER14> Don't take me wrong. But I think your comment reaffirms what everyone and the author of the post says about Google+. That Google+ is quickly turning out to be an elitist network where people don't want what they perceive as 'common' people to be part of. And it's not cool anymore for them once it's adopted widely. It's not much very different from how iOS app users reacted when Instagram launched their Android app and saw a flood of Android users coming in to the network or how Quora early adopters complained about when they opened up from the private beta.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I use Google+ every couple of days, and I do see new stuff in my stream (mostly because I follow over 800 people) but lets stop beating around the bushes, Google+ is a failure if they wanted to make a dent in Facebook, it's a failure if they wanted the greater world population to care about it, and I don't see how Google can do anything about it now. Sure, just like Buzz, it has its regular users, but it's not what Google was hoping for close to a year after launch I'm sure.

</comment><comment><USER16> I have to ask, what was the point of the post ?

It just looked like an endless rant deviating from the numbers that google was not publishing to the comparision with Facebook to the actual realization that G+ may not be a _ghost town_ and back to more google bashing.

-1 if I could, but I can not.

</comment><comment><USER17> _When Facebook says it has over 800 million active users, it really seems to mean people who came into Facebook and used the service in some way in a given month. They seem to be logged in and somehow actively using their accounts._

As I understand it, Facebook counts anyone who clicks a like button on any website as being an active user for the month too.

It wouldn't shock me if, as non-Facebook user, if they counted my visit to a public event page as me becoming active too.

<comment><USER18> No , they don't. Facebook is pretty serious about that:

> • Monthly Active Users (MAUs). We define a monthly active user as a > registered Facebook user who logged in and visited Facebook through our > website or a mobile device, or took an action to share content or activity > with his or her Facebook friends or connections via a third-party website > that is integrated with Facebook, in the last 30 days as of the date of > measurement. MAUs are a measure of the size of our global active user > community, which has grown substantially in the past several years.

[http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/0001193125120...](http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/000119312512034517/d287954ds1.htm)

<comment><USER19> " or took an action to share content or activity with his or her Facebook friends or connections via a third-party website that is integrated with Facebook"

Sounds like clicking a like button on a site.

<comment><USER20> Yes clicking, not just viewing. Google counts visiting Youtube (while logged in) as using Google+. These are completely different metrics.

<comment><USER21> Not it isn't. If you visit <https://www.facebook.com/media/video/> Facebook counts it. Google just hosts their videos on a different domain. It is still the same Google Account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If I'm really proud of something I've done, I would think it's a cop-out to crow about my DAU or MAU to imply that it's good, especially if I'm Google and have the ability to drive hundreds of millions of inorganic users at it.

</comment><comment><USER23> Google also has a funny way of counting "shares": if I have 1 million people in my circles and tell them to check a story, 1 million shares just happened ("A million items were shared"). Technically they may be right but it's not how I see it, a million shares would be when a million people share it, not merely get something pushed in their pages.

To answer some comments, I think they are plenty of ways Google can share meaningful, easy to understand stats about G+, if they wanted to.

</comment><comment><USER24> As I see it 90% of Google+'s purpose is to get users to create profiles and then these popup within Google properties in the form of picture thumbnails when the user comments or uploads stuff, etc. Which is perfectly reasonable as almost all web apps now operate around user profiles (mostly Facebook's), what I find to be unreasonable however is the seemingly heightened intolerance some pundits have developed towards G+.

<comment><USER25> Did you read the article? Most of these pundits don't hate G+, or Google's business model here, or what they're doing with social.

They hate the PR nonsense that Google's feels is neccesary to abstract away the fact that they're tiny compared to Facebook.

I do too, it feels dishonest. You don't need to post the same numbers as Facebook. No one is expecting you to. So stop lying with statistics. It's like, Do No Evil is officially gone. Maybe a few white lies here and there never hurt anyone, right?

<comment><USER26> Facebook is also tiny next to Facebook.

Pundits have confused social networking with Facebook to the point where playing games or up voting articles is social networking because that's something that Facebook does. Nobody considers XBox live a social networking site, but people do the same things on Facebook and that counts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I actually believe the google+ user count. do a search for cialis, viagra, etc. - it's spam central. but then again so is tumblr, twitter, etc. and no one gives them grief about calling these folks users.

</comment><comment><USER28> Just as the only one sharing phone sales is Apple (one exception, Samsung and the Galaxy S2). Just as Apple is the only one sharing Tablet numbers.</comment>


Git for the nervous developer - <AUTHOR> http://beust.com/weblog/2010/04/06/git-for-the-nervous-developer/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+beust%2FOtakuRdf+%28Otaku%2C+Cedric%27s+weblog%29 <comment><USER2> I'm becoming a huge fan of gerrit.

I have to say that I still feel that "git commit -a" is trouble. It's OK to ease one in, but the faster you free yourself from thinking of committing as "saving the state of things" and begin to think of committing as "introducing a change" the more sense it all makes for everyone else.

(I say this having had my team spend a week or so cleaning up a tree for public consumption and hearing them say things like "I don't understand what this change does" -- if _we_ don't understand, _we_ can't publish it)

<comment><USER3> "git add -p" is one of my favorite things.

Do you know if anyone's written some porcelain that combines _add -p_ with _commit_? Maybe you're adding annotations to the hunks as you 'y' them, which then gets inlined into _COMMIT_EDITMSG_?

<comment><USER4> dlsspy:

It depends. I make complex merges/branches on a regular basis and I find myself using `commit -a` pretty often, but I am also diligently branching out whenever I start working on something different, so I'm often confident that all the files that are both tracked and modified are the ones I want to commit.

blasedl:

I think that `git add -p` (committing certain changes in a file but not others) is a pretty advanced feature. I can see how it can be a life saver for experienced users, but I recommend creating two branches with each 100% of your changes rather than using just one branch that contains 60% and 40% of your changes.

One switch that I find very useful is `git add -i`, which you should use whenever you want to add 2 files but you have 20 untracked ones in your working directory.

<comment><USER3> _add -p_ is barely advanced at all. It's certainly less advanced than merging the conflicts between pointless local branches and dealing with the existence of modified files in the working copy when switching between them.

I find _commit -am_ to be more infantile than _rebase_ is advanced. Don't try to pretend that the index doesn't exist, since it will get dropped in your lap eventually, most likely when you least want it to (failed merge, etc).

<comment><USER2> I agree with this.

In the above mentioned cleanup procedure, one of my developers was _convinced_ that git would commit all changes during an interactive rebase where he was splitting a changeset regardless of what he had staged.

I asked him the exact commands he used:

        git rebase -i whatever
        # select a thing to edit and split
        git add -p # ...
        git commit
        git rebase --continue

Said it never split his change. Then I saw his transcript -- it included "git commit -a" Apparently he got so used to typing that that he just instinctively placed "-a" at the end of "git commit" because that's how you do it.

I'm pretty sure he wasted hours with the magic -a option (not counting the ones that required the commits to be split up in the first place).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _As opposed to its ugly user interface, Git's underlying infrastructure is very solid and extremely well designed. On top of that, it's actually not that hard to understand, and once you do, a whole new world will open up._

This is the crux of why I love git and why I think so many people hate it. I love it because at the end of the day what it does under the hood is quite simple and intuitive, as opposed to systems like svn or cvs which even after using for ten times as long still were extremely opaque to me. It's a shame a lot of people can't make it past the interface.

<comment><USER6> "On top of that, it's actually not that hard to understand, and once you do, a whole new world will open up."

While I agree with the author I must point out that it will take some effort for average users to understand what goes on behind the scenes. Especially if they have been using CVS/SVN for long.

I came to git from SVN. It took me a good hour of working through the key diagrams/explanations using a pencil and paper to figure out the git model. And once I did git became a pleasure to work with.

I find that some of my fellow developers are averse to making this initial investment of time and brain cycles to understand the theory of git. Some of them feel that a version control system isn't worth spending time on. Some of this reluctance has to do with how one is introduced to source control. Many learn about version control from "senior developers". More often than not CVS/SVN is explained away as "tracking diffs". Naturally when faced with something like git they ignore it or balk at the idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very well written and pleasantly neutral. He focuses on a few key issues, which makes the article a very good starting point.

</comment><comment><USER8> nice article! another blog post that push me to leave svn</comment>


Workers in Silicon Valley Weigh in on Obama's Immigration Order - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/24/technology/workers-in-silicon-valley-weigh-in-on-obamas-immigration-order.html?ref=technology <comment><USER2> Look its no accident that the Top 3 H1-B Employers is on the low end of the salary scale.

[http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2014-H1B-Visa- Sponsor.aspx](http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2014-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx)

If these jobs are paying the $60-70K Range, to me there is no reason why a College Graduate from an American Computer Science or Information Systems cannot perform these jobs.

IMO, end clients such as Fortune 500 are simply using the Cognizant's, Infosys etc. of the world, as a "Flexible Workforce" or "Onshoring Model" in lieu of actually hiring and training employees.

In my view, they should allow these otherwise H1-B's access to a visa that isn't tied to an employer, so they can seek competitive wages and allow them to compete openly without the prospect them being deported be a drag on their salary, or cut down the H1-B's entirely. Either way, I believe is difficult for Americans to compete.

We can talk special privileges for "startups" but as long as it takes $500 on incorporate.com to create a company, the system will be abused.

<comment><USER3> And yet the word h1-B doesn't even appear in the article, sigh.

<comment><USER4> Let me guess. You didn't even read the article and simply did ctrl+f h1-B, which didn't give you any results, because it's a typo.

<comment><USER3> I did read it, and I thought it doesn't even deserve to be called journalism. They only reference people currently going through the immigration process, and employers. What do you think their perspective is going to be? They even included a quote from an employer claiming that he hires 10 Americans for every immigrant, without any quantification, clarification or investigation, let alone analysis on whether or not that is common for technology firms (it isn't). For all we know, all 10 hired people don't make a combined salary of the single imported worker. They then left an unsourced quote as the very last line of the article claiming that the new measure would not in any way be related to wage suppression.

When I worked for actual worker's rights, in another lifetime, whenever a PR firm hired out journalists to write a hit piece on our organization they would write articles of this quality. Selectively choosing interviewees to meet a predefined viewpoint, skipping over flashpoint words, presenting only one viewpoint without analysis, and then as a buried lead, dismiss potential opposition worries as far below the fold as possible.

<comment><USER5> > They then left an unsourced quote as the very last line of the article

The article stated the source of that quote:

"Carl Guardino, chief executive of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, which represents most of the region's large tech companies"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > "Mr. Srini said the American visa restrictions had also crimped his ability > to hire talented engineers. Because the primary visas used to hire software > workers, known as H-1B visas, run out in a few days when the lottery is > opened every April, he really has one chance a year to hire foreigners. And > if they don't win the lottery, they have to wait another year, often forcing > Zenefits to find someone else."

I don't disagree with the article in regards to easing the ability for entrepreneurs to come to the States and open a business but it has been proven time and again that most of the "we lack talented engineers, we need more H1-B's" is in fact "we don't want to pay the going rate in the States, we need more H1-B's"

<comment><USER7> This part of the article really stuck out to me too. Are we supposed to feel bad for Zenefits here? If Zenefits is able to find someone else, then they didn't need the H1B to begin with...

Not that it matters in the grand scheme, but I'm willing to write off Zenefits as a potential employer if this is the attitude of the founders.

<comment><USER8> I think there is something weird going on. At least for tech, I think there's a mentality that our hiring pool isn't just "people who show up at our office with a resume" or even "people in the same country" but "the entire goddamn world".

I don't know if this is good or bad, but I think it's definitely different from the way things used to be, and probably different from the way things still are in a lot of industries. So it seems reasonable to say that the current US immigration policies were not written with the whole-world hiring pool mentality in mind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Sigh. Here we go again.

Look, the problem is easy to solve. Tell INS that a tech H1-B converts to a green card in a year and make it stick. No waiting 6+ _years_.

The H1-B quota empties out. Domestic tech folks aren't being undercut by Asian serfs. Companies get the tech workers they need.

Of course, the tech companies don't want this. There is no tech worker shortage; there is a _cheap_ tech worker shortage. Granting green cards would make tech workers more expensive.

<comment><USER10> _The H1-B quota empties out._

Is there a good reason to believe this would happen? It seems possible that the new green card holders would just find themselves in the same situation as native workers. How many hundreds of thousands of IT degrees are awarded every year in India?

<comment><USER9> Because H1-B's are expensive. If you can't hold onto the worker more than 1 year, you never make the money back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why not just apply basic of economy to visa ?

I mean every day you match X visas to the highest salaries!

So salaries doesn't go down, and people can apply all year.

And you check the salary is really paid.

</comment><comment><USER12> H1B visas are an excuse to pay less for high tech workers IMO. That is what I've always seen as American workers aren't chosen for those jobs because they can make more money else where. Why isn't this more well known?

<comment><USER13> Simple answer: because it's not politically correct to ask about it. Merely questioning anything anything benefiting immigrants and you're instantly labeled an ignorant xenophobic backwoods dweller. Who cares about finding jobs for Americans? Companies wants the cheapest and most expendable resources they can find. Zuckerberg doesn't give a shit about immigration reform, it just so happens that pushing for it aligns with reducing Facebook's human capital costs.

Money rules all.

<comment><USER14> The US currently takes about 1.2 million immigrants into the country every year, and of course Facebook is more than welcome to hire these new citizens, just as it would hire any UC citizen regardless or immigration status or national origin.

I'm not really surprised Facebook wants to change the composition of immigrants coming to the US. Except for some very narrow programs, immigrants to the US aren't really chosen based on skills and education. So Facebook would much rather support a program where they get to decide who does and does not get to live and work in the US, screening for the kind of worker they'd like to employ. There is also the appeal of an indentured worker, as many people have pointed out. You don't have to be especially cynical to think this is a huge selling point to the corporations that rely heavily on the H1B visa. What would Facebook rather have - a free citizen immigrant who wasn't selected for any particular interest or ability in programming, or an immigrant who is granted the right to live and work in the US provided he or she lives where Facebook says he or she should live?

For me, my misgivings come from two main sources. First, I am solidly opposed to corporate control over the immigration system. I don't like the idea of Facebook's HR department deciding who will and who won't become a US citizen, green card holder, or resident. Second, while I certainly think programmers are valuable workers (some of them, anyway), I don't think that there's sufficient evidence of a shortage relative to other knowledge based fields. Out here in SF, software developers earn (at the median) a bit more than dental hygienists, a bit less than registered nurses. I'm not complaining about that, it's fine by me that nurses are paid better than programmers. I just think it suggests that there's really no critical shortage or programmers that the government needs to get involved in resolving by tinkering with the kind of immigrants who get to come to the US.

I would be ok with a skilled immigration points system like Australia has, and sure, programming counts as a skill, though I wouldn't put any unusual emphasis on programming vs plumbing, nursing, dental hygiene, or any number of other jobs requiring specialized skills and training.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Can someone help me understand what the new reforms are?

I have seen a lot of countries offer "entrepreneur" visas. And all of them are highly unrealistic and out of touch with reality. Standard requirements are masters, sometimes phd, have 500K euro funding and the like, able to employ 5 people within a year (!) and so on.

Policy makes clearly don't understand what makes startups work. I think people should be allowed into a country as long as can show proof of funds, a business plan (more like a statement of intent) and the progress can be revisited every year for visa renewal. Anything else is absurd.

<comment><USER16> I don't see why "entrepreneurs" of any kind should receive special visa prioritization over all other categories of entrant.

<comment><USER17> The standard argument against immigration is that it "takes jobs away" from local applicants. A successful business will typically generate new jobs. Thus, allowing in people who create jobs over those that take them is seen as a net positive.

<comment><USER18> If I were to start Chris's Italian American bakery I'm likely taking some business away from Patel's Pure Ghee Sweets and possibly reducing the number of jobs he creates. So while I've generated 5 _gross_ jobs, it's unclear that I generated any _net_ jobs.

(For the record I think "new jobs" is a moronic reason to do anything. A job is a cost, delicious rainbow cookies are the benefit.)

<comment><USER19> This is true to the extent that different goods are economic substitutes for each other. But even if they are perfect substitutes and no net jobs are created, increased competition would reduce prices for consumers, resulting in a net aggregate economic benefit.

I also think 'jobs' is a moronic reason to do things but immigration policy, more than most, is the focus of atavistic political passions rather than rational economic analysis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> >Right now, the law is so Kafkaesque that Mr. Srini, who is from India, had to get his American co-founder, Parker Conrad, to officially hire him as Zenefits' database administrator simply to transfer his visa from his previous employer so they could create the company

If it is so easy, imagine all the intelliteks, computeks, etc abusing this to suppress wages.

</comment><comment> guard-of-terra I think we really need another SV but in a jurisdiction that makes sense. At least I do, neither a resident of USA nor wanting to be there.

Unfortunately, while finance centers are aplenty, tech centers are much more sparse.

<comment><USER20> These centers are developed by capital willing to invest in risky technology start ups. That is the first-step oxygen that is required to have a SV-style tech hub. You can import the talent in afterwards.

I left Canada because it's mostly resource wealth that makes the money there. There isn't nearly as much capital available for software in Canada as SF. SF has more $30mm+ net worth families/individuals than all of Canada combined. And a 1/3rd of those Canadian families made money from resources.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is an important topic, and the NYTimes should be ashamed of this "journalism". The article is called Workers in Silicon Valley, but it only mentions quotes from Employers and people currently going through the immigration process. I wonder what their perspective is going to be?</comment>


The new Stanford font is awful - <AUTHOR> http://tusb.stanford.edu/2012/11/the-new-stanford-font-is-awful.html

<comment><USER2> Oh, wow, she's absolutely clueless about typography and gets some pretty basic facts wrong. (To pick just one example, Crimson is not the new typeface. Large organizations that have a rather decentralized structure – like universities – tend to favor fonts that are easily available to everyone for their day-to-day communication. Stanford just picked a popular font with a SIL Open Font License, but they do not use that font for the wordmark. Crimson was not specifically created for Stanford, though it was, funnily enough, created by a German guy.)

All of this is very embarrassing and finds its ridiculous apex when the author scolds the wordmark for having a taller f than S. I would suggest taking a good look at Sabon or maybe the headline of her article (the blog uses Georgia which is a mighty fine font, not too dissimilar from what Stanford now uses for their wordmark).

I don't think there is anything wrong with disliking the new wordmark, but if you lash out at it you should at least try to get your facts straight.

(I personally do like the wordmark, though. It's a conservative, carful change, but that seems entirely appropriate for a university. I'm not such a huge fan of all of the applications. Sabon – in combination with all-caps – looks fine but also quite old-fashioned and cliche – and Stanford never struck me as that.)</comment>


Ask HN: Is it a good idea to seek funding pre-launch? - <AUTHOR>

I've built, and validated the need for, my app but I don't have the funds to grow it; there's a sales component to it and I need to hire some sales reps to scale. The app also requires a sizable upfront expense per major city (population > 100k) that is recouped about 10 days later.
The startup is a b2b play that has a b2c component that I'm working on too.
Are investors likely to invest assuming they like the idea, the initial execution (the building of the app), and the size of the market, with no traction (not yet launched).
Should I start looking for funding now? <comment><USER2> A partial answer to your question: there is an inverse Goldilocks zone for seeking funding. An idea/market/team can potentially be fundable pre-launch no-traction, and be potentially fundable post-launch post-traction, but absent extraordinary circumstances post-launch pre-traction is the kiss of death.

 _The app also requires a sizable upfront expense per major city (population > 100k) that is recouped about 10 days later._

For what it is worth: Many investors will assign fairly low confidence to this prediction prior to you having successfully demonstrated it 1+ times.

<comment><AUTHOR> The problem I'm worried about is precisely what you're warning against: I'm confident that I can successfully launch in one city (with my own funds) but I'm afraid that this will be considered post-launch and pre-traction when I solicit investors.

<comment><USER3> if you can recoup your funds 10 days after launching in one such city, why are you worried about the investors?

launch in 1 city -> recoup -> launch in another city -> recoup -> ... do that enough times and you either have traction and/or you don't really need investors.

i suspect that your prediction of the recoup-ability is what's off.

<comment><AUTHOR> I should be more clear.

The startup's customers are from among many verticals. Acquiring those customers is why I need the sales team. I can work to acquire a few myself within a specific vertical. To service the acquired customers is where the monetary expense is required (think PPC ads that are later billed to the customers, for example).

Of course, I can do one at a time, but why? That's the point of me wanting to seek funding - to scale quickly...to go after multiple companies in multiple cities within multiple industries.

<comment><USER4> The dynamic you are describing captures probably the majority of all the pitches investors hear. Everyone thinks they can "recoup" within X days of spending on sales, marketing, and support. The reason to do it one city at a time is that it allows you to demonstrate two things: (a) that your model actually does work, unlike the 1000 competing pitches that claim the same thing but don't work at all, and (b) that you don't actually need their investment, which gives you leverage in your negotiation and, counterintuitively, makes you a more attractive investment.

<comment><AUTHOR> I see.

(b) is golden. In a way, it's like ignoring a girl that I like, while making myself discernibly more desirable.

Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My thought is that it doesn't hurt to start the conversation, especially given that you already have a business plan and a product.

But whether you take investment depends on the valuation you can get and the amount of equity you'll be asked to give up.

You need to determine three things:

(1) How much is your company worth?

Basically, the assets you have in the present, plus present value of expected future profit.

(2) How much you're willing to give up?

Figure out whether you want to maintain a majority of the business, and how much margin you want to leave for future equity grants (later funding or stock-based compensation incentives)

(3) What's your exit strategy?

If you're planning on staying with this business for a long time, then you can probably get better returns, and have a freer hand with strategy, if you avoid taking lots of investment. Staying in a niche and generating $100k a year in profit to live a reasonable lifestyle and support a family with minimal work (once you're past the startup stage) can be considered success if you're 100% owner, but an investor might not be happy unless you get acquired for $1M - $10M, and might try to pressure or even force you to pursue that outcome.

OTOH, if you're looking to eventually hand the reins over to someone else and cash out a nice golden parachute down the road, I'd start the ball rolling with investors early on.

</comment><comment><USER6> My understanding is unless you have a couple succesful businesses under your belt it's hard to get investor interest pre-traction. The other thing investors are going to look at is barriers to entry. if your up and running proving your business model works and making good profits how hard is it for someone to come along charge less and take your business from you.</comment>


The Day I Lost a Shit-ton of Money, Part II - <AUTHOR> http://ptotrading.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-day-i-lost-sht-ton-of-money-part-ii.html?m=1

<comment><USER2> I really like reading stories about trading and especially the quant end of things that isn't as present here. I would like to enter into one of these fields but I don't think I could long-term justify doing work that creates little to no social value[0] - even the most insular, ridiculous app startups at least sell products.

Is there good (i.e. interesting, not necessarily "crazy" and exciting like this) financial work out there that does something beyond make returns for shareholders? It seems like index funds would be one of the best places to work in terms of being at least tangentially related to working on something for real people, but I'm financially illiterate beyond high school economics so I could be way off base.

[0] Yes, I know market liquidity is necessary for companies to do business. I've also heard that trading firms are way populous past the minimum needed for efficient markets - please correct me if this is wrong.

<comment><USER3> I was toying with the idea of entering financial software, one company I was introduced to (Premise) was working on building crowdsourced economic data. They surely make their money by selling this data to hedge funds, etc, but I see the overall mission of having a much more accurate and detailed view of prices and inflationary trends as being a noble goal in the world of finance. Better measures of inflation and other economic activity can markedly affect monetary policy and in turn affect the well being of billions of people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8627532](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8627532)

<comment><AUTHOR> Didn't notice, sorry.</comment></comment>